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★★★★★
Directed by: Johnathan Levine
Written by: Jacob Forman
Starring: Amber Heard, Anson Mount, Whitney Able and Michael Welch
Throwback Film Review by: Rachel Pullen
All The Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006) Film Review
This movie was screened at the Midnight Madness event at the Toronto Film Festival to a sold-out crowd, it gained a loyal audience which led to an inevitable bidding war between studios, it got sold…to a company that went out of business and stuffed it in a vault, where it sat until 2013…and that is where I come in.
All The Boys Love Mandy Lane become one of those films that I had heard of and started to go mad waiting to see it; it was the story of two friends called Mandy and Emmet who decide to take out the ‘’jocks’’ at school after she had blossomed over summer to become a total hottie. That was, of course, completely unobtainable, these boys are stupid, always go for someone lower than you in the food chain, that way you can stay the real alpha.
Mandy is treated like cattle, something to be observed and bought by the bidding men, trying to out macho each other. Mandy joins them on a weekend away at a family holiday home, whereby Emmet slowly takes them out one by one, hoping to please Mandy before fulfilling their ultimate plan, as we can tell at this point, Emmet is quite the simp for Mandy Lane.
But of course, because he is pitching a trouser tent for Mandy she is all disgusted by him, and once he comes to the end of his kill fest, he hopes Mandy will kill herself with him like they planned…and she was like…Nah - typical woman, always changing her mind, and so she then shanks him up and makes it appear as if she is the victim all along…nice.
This movie has everything, as you can already tell, an interesting and engaging storyline, a teen horror flick with a twist, a director who loved that 70s slasher feel and employed it into every detail of the film, the orange and yellow colours are everywhere to give it an old school vibe, furniture, cars as well as the character aesthetics have a subtle yet effective sprinkling of that retro flair, and combine that with vast cornfields and the right amount of sun flares, and you got a film oozing style.
Its steady and relaxed pacing means you can immerse yourself into the characters enough to feel invested in their deaths, not something that teen slasher flicks tend to regularly do. It’s around 40 minutes before the first person dies in this movie, so we really, as an audience, have had the time to decide who we want to survive and who we want to die…I wanted them all to die but Emmet, I’m a sucker for a killer simp.
So many great movies seem to go under the radar, and when I get into yelling about the failures of Hollywood blockbusters vs the underdogs of the movie world, All The Boys Love Mandy Lane is always a film I pull out of the bag, and for good reason, (that and Session 9, never forget my love for that film).
Stylish, immersive, and compelling, All The Boys Love Mandy Lane takes a mature approach to the teen slasher genre.
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